21 April 2009

Marc Kuchner with the Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USA, is the 2009 recipient of the Early Career Achievement award in recognition of his outstanding achievements which have greatly facilitated the detection and characterization of extra-solar planets. His invention and refinement of new telescope coronagraph masks provide astronomers with innovative tools needed to detect planets directly around bright stars.

Dr. Jennifer J. Wiseman, Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, states, "Marc is a multi-talented astronomer who has made significant contributions via astronomical observations, theory and instrumentation. I would like to highlight Marc's work on a new optical technique for enabling the discovery and direct observation of extrasolar planets, i.e. planets orbiting stars other than our Sun.

Marc currently has two graduate students working with him on debris disk dynamics; he's funded these students by winning a Hubble Space Telescope theory grant and a grant from the Keck Interferometer Shared Risk Science Program.

Kuchner has authored numerous journal articles, and presented several invited talks. He is an SPIE member.

SPIE Early Career Achievement Award is given annually to an early career professional in recognition of significant and innovative technical contributions to any of the engineering or scientific fields of interest to SPIE. The award is presented at an SPIE Conference devoted to the early career professional's field. An honorarium of $2,000.00 will be presented.

SPIE presents several yearly awards that recognize outstanding individual and team technical accomplishments and meritorious service to the Society. SPIE urges you to nominate a colleague for his or her outstanding achievements. Nominations may be made through October 1 of any given year and are considered active for three years from the submission date. Visit SPIE.org/x1164.xml for instructions and nomination forms.